Citizen participation, defined as a power issue, is a crucial constituent of democracies and has implications for policy-making in the security field. From this power perspective reflections are made on citizen participation within the field of policing in Belgium. We reflect on this issue by using the concept of citizen participation of Sherry Arnstein (1969) and by focusing on some practices developed in Belgium. We contextualize our findings from a historical perspective in which we pay attention to the influence of the traditional Belgian police model on the initiatives being observed.